


one more time

by 24Carrots



Category: Schitt's Creek (TV) RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:54:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23474983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/24Carrots/pseuds/24Carrots
Summary: All the times Dan and Noah knew each other um,sociallybefore Schitt's Creek.
Relationships: Dan Levy/Noah Reid
Comments: 28
Kudos: 100





	one more time

**Author's Note:**

> Set in an alternate universe where everyone is single.

The first time, they really don’t know each other that well. Which isn’t to say they aren’t aware of each other. Noah’s pretty sure it’s only a matter of time before they know each other very well. There’s just something between them, something staticky that takes over his brain whenever they run into each other.

It happens at one of those parties where the whole guest list is at most two degrees of separation from Degrassi. There is a piano and alcohol and it generally doesn’t take very long before Noah is combining the two. 

This time it’s not even his idea, though. It’s Paula’s. She drags him in from the kitchen, ignoring his protests that he was having a snack. Instead she hands him a drink and points at the piano and requests Leonard Cohen because she knows he can’t fuckin’ resist playing Cohen on a beautiful instrument like this. 

Noah reaches over to set his drink on a low shelf near the piano, smiling at the guy leaned up against it. Noah’s not always great with names but he’s never forgotten his. Daniel. Everyone calls him Dan, but the first time they met, he introduced himself as Daniel. And now whenever they see each other at one of these, Noah hears it again through his crooked curve of a smile in that soft shy voice and it’s just. It's something you remember.

“Daniel, hey,” he says.

“Hi. Am I in the way?”

“No, you’re perfect,” Noah says, because fuck it. It’s true. Daniel looks like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, which makes Noah want to drag him into an empty room and give him somewhere to put them. “I just need to set down my drink. A piano is not a table. You have to respect it.”

Dan’s smile cracks open at that. "Of course," he says. Noah lingers, not caring that it takes him too long to retreat to the center of the piano bench. He does finally, fussing around until he finds the right key and starts belting out _Hey, That’s No way to Say Goodbye_. 

When he’s only had one drink, he plays the classics: Cohen, Petty, Young, Joni, Dolly. He especially likes the sad ones but he tries to mix it up since it’s a party. Two drinks and he’s into the more popular stuff: The Beatles, Coldplay, Elton John, even a little Adele and Shania Twain. By the third drink, he’s highly suggestable. Which is how he ends up stumbling his way through a TLC medley and rapping Eminem.

By the third drink, he’s also having a hard time taking his eyes off of Daniel. He’s still standing there, long bones and lean muscles at rest against the bookshelf, looking elegant and attentive, nursing some kind of cocktail and watching Noah with a heated gaze. As far as Noah’s concerned, he can watch as long as he wants if he likes what he sees. 

“Any requests?” Noah asks him, setting his third drink back on the shelf. 

“Know any Britney?” He takes another sip of his cocktail and looks at Noah like it’s a dare.

But Noah was too shy to ask people out when he was in school. He learned quickly that the hits would get him farther than the classics. So of course he knows Britney. 

He guesses the key right on the first try, thank fuck, and starts in on the “Baby, I’m so into you” of _(You Drive Me) Crazy_. 

He sings it to Daniel because why the hell not. Maybe it will get him what he wants. 

It does. They run into each other in the back hall, or maybe they find each other on purpose. Noah has sobered up enough to notice the details, the soft cables of his sweater, the points of his stubble, the long curve of his smile, and the quiet drive of his eyes. 

“So um. You sounded good,” Daniel says, taking a tentative step closer. “Your voice is…”

He trails off when Noah steps into his space, slow enough that Daniel can back out of it if he wants. “You wanna get out of here?”

“Yes. Yeah,” Daniel says. “My place is just two blocks.”

“Perfect.” And this time he gets to see Daniel’s face at close range when he calls him perfect.

Noah hazards a glance at his mouth, which is a bad idea. He’s not going to kiss him here. Not yet. He’s not sure how open Daniel wants to be about what he hopes is about to happen. Still, Dan’s mouth is…but no. Noah can wait. There’s something to be said for anticipation. 

Noah lets himself walk close to him on the way to his apartment. Lets the back of his hand brush Daniel’s. Let’s his laughter carry softly into the night until his matches it. 

“You can call me Dan,” he says after Noah teases him by name about his lack of hat. He deserves it; it’s freezing outside.

“Dan.” Noah tries it out. “Okay. But I kind of like Daniel.”

“Mmm,” he says. “Well as long as you’re happy.”

Noah laughs, the sound of it bouncing staccato across the cold night. “I’ll try it.”

They step into the elevator of Daniel’s—Dan’s—building and Noah crowds into his space again. And this time, when he looks at his lips, he follows his gaze with his mouth. Noah’s hands twitch with the force of it as Dan’s hands leap into action, palms pressing into Noah’s biceps and shoulders and curving around the nape of his neck. He pulls him closer, impossibly closer, and Noah is both relieved and disappointed that he didn’t try this sooner. On the one hand, he feels the loss of every potential minute he hasn’t been kissing Dan since the party. On the other, he’s not sure he would have been able to stop long enough to leave that place and come here. He’s not even buzzed anymore. This feeling pulsing through him is all about Dan’s mouth, firm and needy already as his tongue licks into Noah’s. Fuck, this is going to be fun. 

It’s even more than fun; it’s a revelation. Noah drops to his knees and takes Dan in his mouth before they can finish getting undressed. Dan does his best to hold still while Noah takes him apart, the muscles of his thighs bunching and jittering under Noah’s hands as he strokes up and down with his fingertips, in and out with his mouth. Noah loves how controlled he is, loves the way it feels to break that control down one gasp and _oh, fuck_ and fumbling grab at a time. Loves the way it feels when Dan gives it up completely and moves with him, hot and heavy in his mouth.

He’s not even done with him before he knows without a doubt he wants to do this again. 

The second time it happens is after a party, too. This time Noah plays _...Baby One More Time_ without being prompted. They go back to Noah’s. Dan is smart and attentive and so fucking pretty and he’s already starting to figure Noah out. Dan talks about his hands on the piano as Noah's hands feather into the crease of his ass, talks about his voice—“God your fucking voice.”—until Noah is too hoarse to reply. 

The third time it happens he plays _...Baby One More Time_ again. Noah fingers him until he begs, _begs_ to come. Finally, Noah tells him to come, holds him and kisses him as he does. 

By the seventh or eighth time they don’t need the party. They just need each other. Dan comes over or Noah does. Dan lives in L.A. part of the year and he’s busy getting ready to start shooting his first scripted TV show so Noah has to go months without coming the way he does with Dan, safe and hard and gasping. But they keep meeting up when the timing works. Keep trying to find the point at which they’ve had enough of each other. 

They don’t find it. The wanting is unending. But Dan becomes the sole showrunner his second season and they don’t have much time to keep looking for the end of all of this aching desire. 

When Dan calls him and asks him to audition, he says it’s just a formality. Maybe Dan knows, somehow, that playing some guy who’s in love with Daniel Levy won’t be much of a stretch for Noah. They’re not even doing a chemistry test because...what would be the point? 

“I can always kill you off if it doesn’t work out,” Dan says, his teeth nipping the curve of Noah’s shoulder like an empty threat as he grinds down on him.

“You won’t be able to. People are going to be so relieved to meet someone who sees David the way they do. You won’t be able to get rid of me.”

Dan pauses and looks at him, and Noah drops his mouth to the tender skin along his clavicle before his face gets too loud to bury the noise in Dan's throat. It’s the closest Noah has come to admitting the truth of this to either of them. The closest he’ll ever come, if he knows what’s good for him. But something feels different the rest of that night. Like maybe Dan is starting to see himself the way Noah does, too. Maybe he even sees this thing between them.

Which is why the night before the audition, when Dan sends him a text, he’s not sure what to make of it.

_One more time?_

The message is simple so he keeps his reply simple. He doesn’t trust the questions he wants to ask.

_Sure._

Dan fucks him with long, slow strokes and with the kind of abandon that Noah suspects he doesn’t let himself have in most settings. Noah pushes and pulls on him, even prone as he is under him, the weight of Dan bearing down on him. He’s so there, so solid and warm and real. There’s no way this can be the last time they get to do this. 

After, panting and spent, Noah kisses him softly. “Daniel,” he whispers and Dan’s eyes flick open, the smile in them warm and longing the way they always are when Noah uses all the syllables. “I don’t want to push your professional boundaries or whatever. But this doesn’t have to be the last time.”

“I think it does,” Dan says. "It's just my role on the show..." He doesn't finish, just kisses Noah back like an apology.

“Okay.” It’s not the answer he wants, but they have this one time at least. And it’s not over yet. Noah tucks himself into Dan’s side and traces idle patterns on his stomach, laughing with him whenever he hits a ticklish spot and trying to savor the velvety feel of his skin and the smell of his sweat mingled with a faint hint of tobacco and the tiny freckles that form constellations across his torso. 

They fuck one more time on Noah’s first day of shooting, up against the wall in Dan’s trailer. They fuck one more time on the day they shoot David and Patrick’s first kiss, Noah following Dan into his car at the end of the day like a man starved, spending the drive back to Toronto kissing him. They can barely make it upstairs. They fuck one more time after the season three wrap party, when Noah has karaoke to provide his accompaniment and doesn’t have to look up lyrics on his phone for all of Dan’s requests. They fuck one more time on Dan’s birthday in August after joining some mutual friends for dinner. They fuck one more time after Noah throws a party and plays requests including Britney and Christina and Mariah. And they fuck one more time a couple of days later on a random Thursday, just because they want to. And for several weeks after that. They fuck one more time before Dan leaves for L.A. for the year. 

It’s not the same as the other times he’s left, the other months between one passionate night and the next. He aches to feel Dan under him, and even more than that, to drop by with pizza and watch _Bridget Jones’s Diary_ or some other movie that he has no interest in, to play songs for Dan in the privacy of his home, to take his requests at the piano and then in bed, to show Dan that no matter what he wants, with anything he wants, all he really has to do is ask.

They fuck one more time before filming starts on season four. They have to be on set at six a.m. and Dan says Noah should just stay. Ride with him in the morning. So he does. They film the Stevie’s apartment scenes and Noah feels hot by the end of it. It’s harder than he thought it would be, letting Patrick run toward David with everything he has while Noah has restrain himself, to keep himself from taking even the most hesitant of steps. It’s so hard. It’s too hard.

“One more time?” Dan asks when they wrap for the day. It’s a joke by now. They know it’s only a matter of time before one last time just becomes last time. Unless.

“I can’t,” Noah says. It kills him to say it. It kills Dan a little too. Noah watches in half-amusement and half-dismay as the little frown forms between his eyebrows before spreading to the rest of his face. “I want to. But I want…I want a hundred more times. A thousand times. I don’t want to pretend that it doesn’t cost me anything to keep letting this go until next time.”

“O-oh.” Dan’s not ready for it, but he recovers quickly. “But I thought we said…” He doesn’t finish.

“It’s okay,” Noah says. He wasn’t really expecting the answer he was hoping for. He opens the door to the car that’s supposed to drive Dan home. Dan gets in and he closes the door behind him, leaning in through the open window. “I had a good time, Daniel," he murmurs, and then kisses him goodbye.

Noah doesn’t have to be on set for several more days. Most of his scenes are in the store and they’ll film those in the summer. He lets himself wallow a little. He works on the Tina Turner song he’s supposed to be rearranging for the show. He reads through the script for the barbecue episode, thinking it might be helpful to access that space for Patrick while he’s in this one as Noah. He’s afraid he ruined everything with Dan, so he might as well use it. He hangs out with his friends and goes to a party. There’s a piano, but he doesn’t play any of the pop divas. He pretends he’s had too many drinks to hear the requests. He’s barely finished his first. He plays _Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye_ and _Jolene_ and _Ain't No Sunshine_ ; he doesn't care that they're kind of sad songs for a party.

Dan shows up at his house two days later, after a long day of shooting. He didn't take his contacts out yet, so his eyes look a little harried and unfocused. He comes in when Noah opens the door and paces back and forth in the small foyer.

He stops, presses his hands together, and looks at Noah with eyes that are carefully hopeful.

“Do you still want a hundred more times?” he asks. “Or did I mess it up?”

Noah feels the smile spread across his face, sees Dan’s match it. “No. That seems like a good place to start.”


End file.
